Re-Thinking, Re-Focusing and Re-Energising how we Lead Innovation and Manage Design

iPhone - boxing clever?

Fascinating how the leading ( in terms of the adoption) people are critiquing the new iPhone talking of how its features, functionality and usability falls below some criteria or other. Are they missing the point? Where does the story fit in?

Like the iPod before it the complete experience- how we make meaning of it (the object) and its context- is what will determine the excellence of the new product, on the nth iteration; If the iPod is a reliable predictor then n is between 1 & 4.

I have modeled Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs as a Design Pyramid to aid innovation teams in articulating the way products and services deliver value by satisfying those needs, both articulated and unarticulated. But the underlying driver of Maslow's thinking, based on his research in (US)American organisations, was that we satisfy our needs at a lower level before moving on to the next need in the hierarchy. My colleagues and I thought this was an assumption too far and pragmatically I have got over this by ignoring it and looking at how we satisfy our needs at each level simultaneously. Virginia Postrel writes on the Maslow Myth"I look at why people spend time, energy, and money on more than their "basic needs." Hint: It's not because of advertising. Check out the great photos, including two taken in Laos by my sister-in-law Karen Inman." Virginia Postrel's Innovations article is here. I have been revisiting Rolf Jensen's Dream Society book recently and also looked at Clayton Alderfer's work at improving Maslow's hierarchy which reinforced my thoughts on looking at the levels of needs in concert. Alderfer divided the hierarchy into three:

Perhaps the most famous description of basic human needs is the one introduced by psychologist Abraham Maslow with his Hierarchy of Needs. Maslow states that in most cases, people don’t focus on needs higher in the hierarchy before having adequately satisfied all the lower ones. Originally, Maslow included five levels of needs in his hierarchy: physiological needs, safety needs, belongingness & love needs, esteem needs, and self-actualisation. The two lower levels deal with material needs, while the next two deal with social needs. All of these are deficit needs, while the fifth level, self-actualisation, is a growth need. Maslow later differentiated the human growth needs, most importantly stating that one could transcend oneself in the higher levels of self-actualisation, feeling the need to do something for other people or an ideal without getting anything in return except a feeling of having done the right thing. In the theory of Creative Man, we have chosen to include this level of need on top of Maslow’s original five levels (see figure). However, this isn’t crucial for the validity of the theory.

At CIFS, we acknowledge that Maslow has provided a good list of categories of human needs; however, we don’t think there is any strong hierarchy in these needs. For one thing, there are numerous examples of people or groups of people that have different priorities, from policemen and firemen that daily risk their existence for the sake of their community to the archetypal starving artists that rate personal growth over material needs. More importantly, in most Western societies the average citizen can adequately satisfy needs within all the categories without using all his or her resources in terms of money, time and energy. Once this level of resources has been reached, we think that what needs any additional resources are spent on becomes a highly individual matter. Some will focus mainly on material needs, while others will focus on social needs or personal growth.

What needs are in focus may even be situational in the sense that the same individual may focus on different needs in different life situations.

They redraw Maslow's three spheres - Material Needs, Social Needs and Personal Growth along with the 5 levels of Hierarchy to create a model that acknowledges the complex interactions that go on when we attempt to satisfy our needs within our culture and context... I've drawn it here:

So the iPhone packaging is a metaphor for the possibiity that the product and its ecology of services, accessories, downloadable applications, etc, will meet our 3 levels of needs, wants, desires and cravings. It will be the number of affordances we discover not the number of features that will determine its long term success.

Picture: Wired and Cool. Uploaded by jurvetson . Used with thanks under CC.